Saturday, January 20, 2007

This Summer I had the pleasure of leading a weeklong young adult workshop on Star Island, a beautiful mish mash of UU evangelism, campus ministry, and small group ministry.

The theme speaker of the week was Thandeka, a very popular UU writer and theologian. I won't explain what the talk was about. You can look at the description of the 2006 RE WEEK page.

I will say that after every talk of hers I've been to people go Wow! or Whoa! Though Thandeka admits that people later have trouble remembering exactly what she said. Given this Thandeka was very intentional about boiling it down to easy to remember phrases.

If you are a Thandeka fan or are interested in what she calls "Affective Theology" then this is a must have. The week started off with this: "Our bodies make believers of us all."

$17.50 for 3 audio CD's with a whole week of theme talks including shipping!

Kevin D. Hendricks, of the blog Church Marketing Sucks, has made a Squidoo Lens out of the list. Nice thing about this list is that there are links to the websites of listed churches and you can vote to move items up or down the list (thanks to Squidoo's very cool Plexo technology).

UU ministers and lay leaders, are you following any of these churches? Reading any of their books. Many of them publish resources sharing their innovation. My personal favorite is North Point Church and the books written by Andy Stanley.

Thursday, January 18, 2007

A flat screen TV featuring FOX NEWS just appeared in one of our local banks. Advertisements before movies. Ads on flat screens in check out lines. Those of you feeling that your environment is being attacked by hostile media may join me in the purchase of the TV B-GONE Universal Off Button Keychain. After complaining about the TV proliferation a friend recommended it. A small keychain with an off button that works on most televisions. Nice.

Note: I tend to try and keep posts on this blog to UU related matters. People, if businesses are going to follow the trend and put flat screen television up everywhere and set them to FOX NEWS - its a bad thing. Maybe if our news stations weren't so biased.

Saturday, January 06, 2007

The following is an announcement from Meadville Lombard Theological School on a new large church ministry training.

Meadville Lombard is excited to offer a course focusing on large church ministry leadership in a one week intensive format July 9-13, 2007 in Dallas, Texas.

Learn to create and lead institutions capable of sustaining the complex ministries and operations of large churches. Ordained ministers, lay leaders, seminarians, and church staff will all find applicable, dynamic approaches to 3 key elements of church life:

* Worship * Education * Public Witness

Students will discover the critical alignments and distinct roles of members, ministers and staff found in healthy institutions. This course will offer instruction in theology and theory while drawing on experiences of several large congregations, including one of the most dynamic institutions in the Unitarian Universalist movement today, the First Unitarian Church of Dallas.

We intend to provide people with:

A theology of religious leadership

Skills for building effective leadership teams

Applications for ‘best practices’ in worship, education and public witness

Friday, January 05, 2007

Techno savvy Small Group Ministry & Covenant Group fans - by popular demand I've establishing a "blog version" of the popular Covenant Group News e-newsletter. This blog will be a place for me and other UU Small Group Ministry collaborators to post news as we find it. The edited contents of this blog will be shared via the CGNews e-newsletter.

Get the new CGNews feed if you want to keep posted on new resources, events and other news related to Unitarian Universalist small group ministry and the happenings of the UUSGM Network.

The drive by the Christian right to take control of military chaplaincies, which now sees radical Christians holding roughly 50 percent of chaplaincy appointments in the armed services and service academies, is part of a much larger effort to politicize the military and law enforcement. This effort signals the final and perhaps most deadly stage in the long campaign by the radical Christian right to dismantle America’s open society and build a theocratic state. A successful politicization of the military would signal the end of our democracy.